Guild Wars: Hearts Of The North Out

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Have you HEARD? ArenaNet’s started releasing free content updates for Guild Wars under the title of Guild Wars Beyond, updates that are gently guiding the world through the events preceding Guild Wars 2.

The second of these updates, Hearts of the North, landed yesterday. It tells the story of the romantic and legal union of “the greatest heroes of Ascalon, Gwen and Keiran Thackeray” and even ends in a ceremony and “festivities”. Full details can be browsed on the official site, including info on all the accompanying pay-for tuxedos and dresses. £5 gets you a tux, dress or ladytux, and, bizarrely, £7 allows you to dress up in the same clothes as the bride and groom themselves. Now, I have all the social intelligence of a wounded badger, but surely that’s a faux pas.

It’s basically how free-to-play stuff keeps afloat. The people who just want to play, can, and the people who want to play fancy dress-up and stand out from the crowd get to pay for their vanity.

See TF2’s hats. Expect GW2 to have a broad range of expensive vanity items available for sale. I reckon it’s a far nicer way of paying server costs than making everyone pay a flat $15 a month, whether you play for one hour or a hundred.

They only just introduced costumes recently, previously they kept afloat by selling copies of the game for years. Then they added some extra stuff like skill unlock packs for PvP (you can get them in game fairly easily but a complete set takes a little time) and character slots (you already have quite a few) and minor stuff like that. Now costumes.

So basically it’s natural selection. The idiots who would pay £5-7 for a bit of worthless data which will be gone again soon, shall be punished by paying those £5-7. Which then is missing in their pockets, when they have to win the run against me in evolution.

Sounds nice! I like it!
These days, with all the “Award the biggest failures of our society the most” that they call “being social”, this may save us from becoming an Idiocracy for a few more days…

Final Fantasy XII is an awesome game. The entire world looks as if they hired the Joker as a fashion consultant (including one major supporting character who is a badass pirate who wears pink trousers… and he isn’t gay), but it’s an awesome game. I’m mentioning this, because compared to FF12, that’s a pretty conservative number of belt buckles right there.

Played the new stuff from the update. It basically plays like the Bonus Mission Pack released a year or two ago. You take on the role of Kieran during some quests and you get certain skills to use.

I find it a refreshing diversion from the normal gameplay. It can be challenging at times, but never becomes really tedious. Next stop is the Factions campaign for a future Guildwars Beyond update. Looking forward to it!

I’d just like to add… “Hearts of the North”? Jesus fucking Christ on a bendy bus. And what do you want to bet there are going to be a series of lame gofer quests to producre the necessary effects for the ceremony? Because being put-upon support personnel at a wedding is such a joyous experience in real life that humans are compelled to simulate it.